The images of former President Donald Trump pumping his fist with blood streaming down the side of his face after a failed attempt on his life became instantly iconic.

Those images were shared millions of times across the internet and all social media platforms.

However, one of the famous images was immediately censored by Facebook, and according to the New York Post, the left-leaning social media platform confessed this week that censoring the photo was an "error."

The controversy erupted shortly after the images were released. A social media account that shared the image was quickly threatened in the form of being deplatformed.

What's going on?

The image, shared by the mega-popular "End Wokeness" account, was rapidly labeled as "misinformation" by Facebook. The account holder was then threatened with being deplatformed as a consequence, which sparked major backlash.

BREAKING: Facebook is now censoring the iconic image of Trump's defiant fist

It's now flagged as MISINFORMATION pic.twitter.com/ePUl5kuMw6

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 29, 2024

This week, a spokesperson for Meta, the social media platform's parent company, released a statement saying that flagging the iconic photo was a mistake.

"Yes, this was an error," said Dani Lever, a spokesperson for Meta, in response to a post published by conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. He had called out Facebook for flagging the image and threatening the account owner.

Lever continued, "This fact check was initially applied to a doctored photo showing the secret service agents smiling, and in some cases our systems incorrectly applied that fact check to the real photo. This has been fixed and we apologize for the mistake."

Trump supporters slammed Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg for flagging the photo as "misinformation."

Social media reacts

Users across social media were furious with Facebook for flagging the image, and held nothing back in their criticism of the leftist-friendly Big Tech platform.

"Is Facebook legally required to disclose such blatant and misleading acts of censorship as a donation to the Harris campaign?" one X user wrote.

Another X user wrote, "The Democrats are doing everything they can to suppress news of the assassination attempt on Trump, both on social media and mainstream media networks."

While it's not surprising that the photo was initially flagged, this seems to happen more often than not to one particular side. The "sorry, it was an error" excuses are exhausting and unoriginal.